We’re pleased to announce the introduction of Wikipedia federated searching to the Ultrapedia Library. What this means is that when you search the Ultrapedia Library for a given search term, the search results will also have an entry from Wikipedia at the top the the page.

Below are some example searches to help you get started and for you to try.

We’ve been busy working behind the scenes for the last few months. We want to bring the cream of the library to the surface in a natural manner, this equates to hands on work by a human rather than a computer, spending time reviewing and grading the library documents. The first pass is to remove documents that slipped through our filtering system, so we have removed 472 documents. The total documents in the library now stands at 135,555.

Today we added 7311 new documents to the Ultrapedia Library. Many are letters, lectures, journals, narratives and diaries from notable historical figures – they are a joy to read and explore. We hope you enjoy discovering them.

We also continue to clean up the Library and have removed a further 910 documents that had more than their fair share of recognition errors, leaving a crisper and more accurate representation of the original written work.

For a full listing of todays updates click here.

Also featured in todays updates are:

A General History of the County of Norfolk by John Chambers in 1829

A Handbook for Travellers in Gloucestershire by John Murray in 1872

A Painters Camp in the Highlands by Philip Gilbert Hamerton in 1862

An Excursion to the Mammoth Cave by Robert Davidson in 1840

After Prison – What? by Maud Ballington Booth in 1903

The Life and Public Services of General Andrew Jackson, Seventh President of the USA by John S Jenkins

This brings the total documents in the Library to 134,386 with the total number of pages at 4,266,725 and the total number of Bookmarks now standing at 590,045.

The New Year brings new Library updates. We have been busy in the run up to Christmas and New Year by dividing 1249 of the Books in the Library into 5607 Chapters and further edited the documents to remove some badly recognized characters and phrases. This results in cleaner reading, both in Quick View on the search results page and the downloadable PDF file, as well as swifter searches.

To summarize 5607 documents were added to the Library bringing the total number of documents to 127,283. We’ve also removed 1249 documents. With the new additions and the removed documents the library is now more fluid and refined, providing more targeted results and a more enjoyable read and reference source.

For a full listing of todays updates click here.

Featured in todays updates are:

Climate Weather and Disease by Alfred Haviland in 1855

Our Hardy Grapes by J M Knowlton in 1863

Our Planet Its Past and Future by William Denton in 1873

Our Trade in the World in Relation to Foreign Competition by William Shaw Harris Gastrell in 1897

Narrative of the Arctic Land Expedition by George Back in 1836

Mendelism by Reginald Crundall Punnett in 1911

This brings the total documents in the Library to 127,283 with the total number of pages at 4,088,388 and the total number of Bookmarks now standing at 586,656.

Since the beginning of the year we’ve been refining the Library, the search interface and website. The Library has had a major overhaul, and you’ll now find our books easier to read and access. We’ve removed what we call the ‘padding’ to a book, which is all the stuff that isn’t relevant to the main body or skews a search query; like adverts, indexes, lists and tables, and its then been divided into smaller sections, making reading and retrieval far more efficient. Plates or images from a book have also been spooled off and we’re working on their presentation – more on this another time.

The website has totally changed. After you’ve performed a search you’ll see a panel down the left-hand side. In the panel are two main headings Genre and Bookmarks; Bookmarks is further divided into three categories – People, Places and Footnotes.

Every book relevant to your search query is analysed and all the People, Places and Footnotes found in the book(s) are shown in the panel in ‘hit’ order, along with the Genre. This is particularly useful when you’re researching a subject you dont know a lot about. You can use the links in the panel to further drill down your search, its also gives you a fair indication of the importance of the people, places and footnotes in the book, as well as offering avenues of discovery you might not have otherwise thought of.

In the centre of your screen are your search results with a few lines from each book along with the book Title and Author. Select ‘Quick View’ to view the full text of the book, or View, to view or download the book in its native PDF format – all the hits are highlighted, with hit to hit navigation so you can easily jump between results.

Our legacy Library Browse, is still available while we integrate the various websites and search features, you’ll find the link on the homepage.

We’re committed to making the Ultrapedia Library the best solution for searching and browsing public domain and out of copyright books. We think you’ll enjoy the new site, so please take a moment to visit us and discover a new and exciting way to search and browse our Library. Join us in the forum, we’re interested in your comments, views and feedback.

The site is still officially in beta, which means it works most of the time I guess, but if you like reading old books you might enjoy it. Its currently open to the public – with no adverts or other visible means of support.